This week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was stepping up efforts under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act to end prison rape. The Justice Department recognized that prison rape is a problem not just of violence, but of perception.

“(In) public discourse, it has been at times dismissed by some as an inevitable – or even deserved – consequence of criminality,” the DOJ noted in a written statement. “But sexual abuse is never a laughing matter, nor is it a punishment for a crime. Rather, it is a crime.”

But states that fail to implement the new standards can expect a loss of 5 percent of their Justice Department prison funding unless the states show the same amount of money is being used to bring it into compliance.

Prison accreditation organizations also will be barred from federal grants unless they include similar anti-prison rape standards in their accreditation process, which means local jails could lose their accreditation unless they comply.

The new standards mandate from the federal level how prisons -- including privately-run facilities -- prevent and treat sexual abuse targeting prisoners from other inmates or staff. The DOJ calls for enhanced staff training, grievance reporting systems, video monitoring, and quick response time for medical and psychological attention for the victims of assault.

It also calls for enhanced and speedy punishment of those who make victims of prisoners, whether it is staff or other prisoners.

"The standards we establish today reflect the fact that sexual assault crimes committed within our correctional facilities can have devastating consequences — for individual victims and for communities far beyond our jails and prisons," Holder said in a statement.

In Michigan, part of its participation with the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act was a three-county , four prison study (PDF) in Gratiot, Ionia and Muskegon counties that found the prisoners self-reported rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault between 2.2 and 4.8 percent.

In jails, the rates are generally lower with no assaults reported in Barry County, 2.5 percent in Saginaw County, 2.4 percent in Jackson County and about 2 percent in Kent and Muskegon counties.

He said in the most recent reporting period, there were 23 allegations of non-consensual sexual contact among the state's prison population of more than 43,000 people. Of the 23 reports, Marlan said 11 were found to be made on insufficient grounds, while another five were unfounded, leaving seven of the claims to be potentially valid.

The new regulations require prison officials to screen inmates for the potential of sexual victimization and use that information in assigning housing and work, require background checks on employees and prohibit hiring of abusers. The regulations ban pat downs of female inmates and juveniles by those of another gender.

The new regulations would require detention facilities to incorporate the "unique vulnerabilities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming inmates into training and screening protocols."

The new rules would require juvenile inmates to be kept away from adult inmates, allow anonymous and outside-of-prison reports of sexual victimization and require evidence preservation after a reported incident. Facilities also must produce plans for significant video monitoring.

In a statement, Obama said he believes the rule changes are an important civil rights issue that transcends politics and passed “with bipartisan support and established a "zero tolerance standard" for rape in prisons in the United States.”

"Sexual violence, against any victim, is an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values," President Obama said.